


You Don't Have To (Say It Back)

by mrtinsky



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Missing Scene, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-05
Updated: 2017-02-05
Packaged: 2018-09-22 02:08:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9577469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mrtinsky/pseuds/mrtinsky
Summary: He isn’t surprised when she’s the last one that remembers him. She’s always been a constant. A beautiful inevitability. It was always going to be her, in the end. He just thought he’d have more time.She grips his hand tightly, promises with a hysterical voice and misty eyes that she won’t forget him. She will, though. He knows she will. But he also knows that if anyone can find him, if anyone can bring him back - it’ll be her.“Remember I love you.” He says, because if he has one last breath before he’s ripped from the world, this is worth it.





	

He isn’t surprised when she’s the last one that remembers him. She’s always been a constant. A beautiful inevitability. It was always going to be her, in the end. He just thought he’d have more time.

She grips his hand tightly, promises with a hysterical voice and misty eyes that she won’t forget him. She will, though. He knows she will. But he also knows that if anyone can find him, if anyone can bring him back - it’ll be her.

“Remember I love you.” He says, because if he has one last breath before he’s ripped from the world, this is worth it. 

 

* * *

 

She’s still, too still, and for a second he thinks he’ll never really leave this exam room. He’ll just be here, under the flourescent lights, gently brushing shards of glass off her face for the rest of his life.

When she finally wakes up, it’s like he’s just broken the surface of water he’d been about to drown in. Her eyes are open and suddenly he can breathe again. His heart’s still pounding uncomfortably and his veins are still full of fire - but he can breathe, because she’s still breathing.

She finds his hand, nods that she’s okay. It rolls over him in waves - _she’s okay, she’s okay, she’s okay._

“Stiles saved me.” She smiles as she says it, and maybe he’s still coming down from how close he came to losing her, but he’s pretty sure he catches something in the way she looks at him that he’s never seen before.

 

* * *

 

She’s crying alone in her car, and it’s so miserable, and lonely, and just fundamentally Un-Lydia-Martin-worthy that something in Stiles’ chest tightens painfully. The world is a stupid, unfair place for putting him so close to her, just to watch her cry alone in her car over people who don’t even deserve to breathe in her vicinity.

Not that he deserves to either, but at least he’s aware of it.

Everything else is so far away, now. Whatever he was doing before was probably important, but this feels so much more pressing. He wants so badly to fix this, whatever it is. To show her that someone in this town sees her for the brilliantly complex galaxy she is.

He starts talking, and it’s weird how natural it is. How easily the right words come to him.

“I don’t need anyone seeing me cry,” she says, and the realization of how alone she is, living behind the walls of being _Lydia_ hits him like a punch to the stomach.

He says the first, most honest thing that occurs to him. How beautiful she looks when she cries.

She rolls down the window, just enough to let him in.

 

* * *

 

His heart is pounding madly enough to crack ribs and his lungs are starting collapse, but all that really registers is how afraid she looks. She’s shaking. Her eyes are full of tears. She’s acting brave, saying something about instructions and trying to keep her voice even. Not that it will matter how brave she acts if Stiles can’t keep himself from blacking out before a steel trap closes around her ankle.

“Stiles,” She whispers, “You’re the one who always figures it out.”

She still sounds terrified but there’s something else there, underneath. Something he knows is there because he _knows_ Lydia. Reading her is easier than breathing. She’s afraid, but there’s a trust, and a confidence in her voice because she knows him, too. Knows he’ll do whatever it takes to keep her safe.

“Figure it out.” She tells him.

So he does.

 

* * *

 

In the back of his head he knows that she’s here. She’s sitting with his dad, somewhere in the stands, watching him. Not that he’s thinking much about it. There’s too much going on - with Jackson, Gerard, and the angry members of the other team currently chasing him down the field. With everything else to worry about, he’s not even aware that he remembers where she’s sitting.

Until he makes a goal, anyway. His eyes find her immediately, hone in directly on her face, just in time to watch her mouth press into a quiet smile. It’s not the broad, open mouthed grin she gives Jackson, laced with honey. Not a component of the intricately assembled mask she wears at school. This is delicate, lips crushed together around it like a secret. And it’s for him.

Suddenly, he’s pretty sure he’s capable of making a hundred more goals, as long as she keeps smiling like that.

 

* * *

 

It’s late when the jeep screeches to a halt in her driveway. He’d insisted on driving her home - it seemed like the only thing to do after the close call at Eichen house that afternoon. They’re parked for a while before Stiles realizes she hasn’t moved. She’s still just staring out the window with vacant, tired eyes.

“Hey...you okay?”

She nods unconvincingly, only continuing when she catches sight of his raised eyebrows. When she does speak, it’s with an underlying desperation in her voice that makes Stiles ache somewhere in his chest.

“It’s just that...I could feel it. He came at you with that needle, and I - I had a banshee feeling. I knew someone was going to die but I didn’t know who. Stiles, if you die, I…”

Her mouth hangs open for a second, and then it’s over, just like that. Suddenly she’s borderline frantic to get out of the jeep, stammering something about homework that she needs to get to. By the time he thinks to say something, she’s gone.

So he drives home, carefully dedicating every brain cell to the deadpool. He’s not allowed to wonder what she’d been about to say.

 

* * *

 

“And I'm also pretty sure that I'm the only one who knows how smart you really are.” He practically screams the words at her, and just like that, his frustrated, unplanned rant has moved into something real.

Not that he can stop it now. It’s been bottled up for so long, boiling in the pit of his stomach. Lydia flipping her tests over frantically, before anyone sees the red “110%” at the top; firing off the definition of “ubiquitous” in English class, and then adding a quiet “Or something like that...right?” like she hadn’t just recited the dictionary word for word; batting her eyelashes as Jackson talks down to her, when he’s the moron that can’t see what a genius she is.

He was bound to explode like this at some point, and he doesn’t regret it. It doesn’t matter that she could hate him for saying it, that she might walk over and slap him any second.

But she doesn’t. She just stares at him, stunned. Somehow, no one else has noticed how terribly constructed her facade is. No one has called out her blatantly obvious lie.

She turns away from him as the corners of her lips flick up into the smallest, and yet somehow still the most genuine smile Stiles has ever seen on her.

Because someone finally figured her out.

 

* * *

 

When he opens his eyes, the world is in focus again.

It hasn’t been tilted on it’s axis. It’s unchanged. The locker room is the same as it was when they walked in. The afternoon sunlight is still bathing everything in a soft orange glow. Stiles is still Stiles, still sitting on the cool, concrete floor. Right in front of him, Lydia is still Lydia. Her eyes are wide and unreadable, but definitely hers. Still the same, exquisitely dark green. She’s explaining how she saved him, with logic, and science, and something she read once that she’d filed away in her brain, the way she always does. Like nothing has changed.

Yet somehow, everything is different.

 

* * *

 

She barely lets go of his hand the rest of the night.

Even after everything has calmed down, and they’re sitting in the warm glow of Scott's kitchen eating the best pancakes Stiles had ever tasted - she keeps her fingers laced tightly in his under the table. Like she can physically anchor him to his home, to being real, to her. Like he might disappear again if she lets go.

It’s so surreal, being alive. Making stupid jokes and laughing, surrounded by friends. Feeling his dad's hand clap him on the shoulder. Sitting next to the girl of his dreams. More than once he catches Lydia staring at him with this unfiltered happiness in her eyes that’s so rare, he wants to stop everything and kiss her again. Right then, in front of everyone - and maybe never stop kissing her.

But something about the way she doesn’t look down when his eyes meet hers tells him he’ll have plenty of time for that later.

When his dad has gone to the station and it’s time for Stiles to go home, she climbs into the passenger seat, unfazed when he kills the ignition in his own driveway. It isn’t a question for either of them. She isn’t leaving him.

Stiles is relieved to find that his bedroom is exactly how he left it, but Lydia hesitates in the doorway. She looks around the room slowly, and when her eyes meet his again, tears are clinging to her eyelashes.

He moves toward her instinctively, before he’s even fully aware that she’s crying. He can almost physically feel the pain radiating off of her, pulling him closer. Three months of waiting, missing someone she couldn’t even prove was real. He reaches her in a single stride, cradles her face in his hands. They’re both a little broken, but there’s something phenomenal about finally being able to do this - to be this close, to delicately wipe away her tears with his thumbs. It’s feels right enough to put him back together. Her mouth spreads into a fragile smile under his fingers.

“It’s all back,” she says with a ragged voice and a watery laugh. “You’re back.” She doesn’t elaborate but it’s unnecessary. It’s a message in the Lydia Code that he’d cracked a long time ago. She’s really saying how much she missed him.

“You brought me back,” He whispers, resting his forehead against hers.

She nods, eyes closed tight. “And I...Stiles, I love you too. I mean it, I should have said it a long time -”

He cuts her off with a kiss - gentle and slow. Feels it flood all of the spaces in his chest that had been hollow this morning, burning away the numbness that had settled there.

Because, really, she doesn’t need to say it.

He already knows.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much to Marissa (gorgeoussimplehousecat) and LeeAnn (lumosed) for all your help with this! 
> 
> Y'all Stydia is CANON and I'm definitely never going to be over it.


End file.
